Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie Re-Engage Legal Drama After Another of His Kids Dropped His Last Name for Their Mom’s
The Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie divorce has been very dramatic from the beginning. It came after accusations of abuse on Brad Pitt‘s side, and most of the couple’s kids dropped his last name. Not to mention a lawsuit, as the former couple fought over a winery they purchased while they were still together. In fact, this has been the opposite of a quiet divorce where everyone goes their separate ways.
Now, according to TMZ, Pitt is asking a Los Angeles judge to force businessman Yuri Shefler to appear for a remote deposition. Shefler bought Jolie’s stake in the French winery Chateau Miraval. Pitt has claimed Jolie did that without his permission, and that he was interested in buying her stake.
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Pitt claims Shefler has refused to sit for a deposition and says he “learned that the transaction was orchestrated by, and closed at the behest of” Shefler, so his legal team should be able to question him. Shefler has opposed the request on the grounds that he’s a resident of Switzerland.
This comes as Piit’s relationship with his children has been heavily scrutinized after news that another one of his children has dropped his last name. Maddox, Pitt’s eldest child with ex-wife Jolie, removed Pitt from his last name in the credits of his mom’s new movie, Couture. Maddox served as an assistant director in the film.
In the end credits of the film, which stars Jolie as an American film director diagnosed with breast cancer just when she arrives in France to film a video for a Paris fashion show, Maddox’s name is listed as Maddox Jolie instead of Maddox Jolie-Pitt. Production notes provided to journalists during the Toronto International Film Festival, where the movie premiered in September 2025, also listed Maddox’s name as Maddox Jolie.
Back in 2024, when Maddox was credited in his mother’s 2024 Netflix movie, Maria, he was listed as Maddox Jolie-Pitt. On that film, he worked as a production assistant.
Maddox isn’t the first of the couple’s kids to take firm steps to distance himself from Pitt. In a Playbill for the Broadway musical The Outsiders in May 2024, Pitt’s daughter Vivienne was credited as Vivienne Jolie, instead of Vivienne Jolie-Pitt. She helped produce the play.
Also in 2024, Essence shared a video of daughter Zahara introducing herself as, “My name is Zahara Marley Jolie. And [I] landed all the way from the Golden State in the city full of angels: Los Angeles, California.” Pitt’s daughter Shiloh, meanwhile, went a step further. She had her name legally changed to Shiloh Jolie after she turned 18 and was legally allowed to do so.
Shiloh’s attorney said at the time that the decision was part of “an independent and significant decision following painful events.”
Maddox, 24, is Jolie and Pitt’s oldest. His siblings are Pax, 22, Zahara, 20, Shiloh, 19, and 17-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne.
“He’s aware that Shiloh dropped his last name,” a source told People when it was announced that Shiloh was changing her last name. “The reminders that he’s lost his children, is of course not easy for Brad. He loves his children and misses them.”
